Monday, October 31, 2016

Happy Halloween, readers! The human psyche is full of fear.
A lot of fear comes from our vivid imaginations-horror is full of hypothetical
situations based on pure fantasy, but on premises that date to real situations
and concepts. Murder, disaster, accident, disease-people die from horrific
causes. Most monsters are humanoid-people are the leading cause of human
deaths. Many of our fears come from animals. Bats are alien-looking, rats carry
disease, and arthropods are alien-looking and often dangerous.

Then there’s the fears dating from actual experiences.
History is replete with examples of people by accident or malice coming into
conflict with animals.People have been
killed by our own domesticated animals: dogs can be taught to be brutal
attackers, and angry cattle, horses, and pigs are more than a match for an
unarmed human.

Then there’s people being killed by wild animals; every day
an unlucky person runs into a dangerous animal, are perceived as predator or
prey, and dispatched by deadly natural weapons honed by generations of natural
selection.Without technology, a human
being is pathetic. We’re bigger than most animals, but the largest predators
dwarf us. Our resistance against venom and chemical weapons is just our size
alone. Our natural weapons are pathetic: we can barely outrun an elephant on a
good day, our strength is feeble, our teeth are small, and our fingers and toes
are tipped with sensitive pads instead of hooves or claws. We have no armor or
horns or quills, we can’t fly, and are only efficient swimmers with a great
deal of effort.

Now imagine humans without our technology.No guns, not even a spear. We were prey.An enemy could come at any direction, and
kill us without a fight. At night, we were blind without fire, at the mercy of
nocturnal predators. You could wake up at any morning and you could find a
member of your family vanished. In the day, you’d be looking at the grass
nervously. Every time you tried to eat or drink you would have to keep your
eyes moving and eating as quickly as possible. If you scavenged from a kill,
you could easily find yourself the neighboring carcass.These are the animals we feared. Welcome to
my nightmare, my friends; I think you’re going to like it.

Friday, October 21, 2016

When you think of timeless fossil museums in the USA, you
usually think of places like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. You think of
schools like Harvard, Yale, and Drexel. You think of places where they’re found
like in Texas, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, and Colorado. When you think of the city
of Pittsburgh, you think the highlands of western Pennsylvania as the
Appalachians cut through the state towards New York. You think of the steel and
the coal and the massive factories and sweating immigrants.You would never connect Pittsburgh with a
fossil museum.

About Me

Hi everyone! You may know me already, but 99% of you won't. I've decided to make a blog for myself. I'm a anthropology student who has returned to his original passion for palaeontology. Ever since I was little, I've been fascinated with the weird and wonderful animals that have inhabited our planet and I've made this blog to keep this in my mind and hopefully in yours. Most people blog about their interests, and while I've got a range of interests-see history and anthropology above, not to mention zoology, astronomy, art, cooking, science fiction and fantasy films and literature, and a myriad of others, the one I want to do for a living is the study of Earth's ancient past.

On this blog I'll review papers, talk about fossils, museums, and taxa, review art, film, literature, and our culture's view of paleontology, and share memories and insights. I've been inspired by the far better blogs of professional palaeontologists, and I'll share them as time goes on. I'm also open to requests and questions of opinions, the latest palaeo news, and discussions with other fans informal and professional.

I think this is going to have fun, and I'm hoping my readers will have just as much fun.

Copyright: All media and print reviewed belongs to the owners and publishers. Likewise, all art used for this blog belongs to their artists. This is a non-profit blog for education and entertainment.